"I can't believe that you're actually doing this."
"Well you better believe it."
"But, Max. Just a day ago you were ranting about how much you hated that school."
"Minds change."
"But now we can't go to the same school together."
"Isn't that better for you?"
"True."
I was having argument with Ella. It had been two weeks since I made my decision and she really didn't want me to attend Angel Academy. She wasn't used to being apart from me. Mom being Mom, we were always stuck together. Like two peas in a pod. Ella was obviously upset that she couldn't keep me away from going to orientation.
"Don't worry, Ella. I can always come visit during the weekends. Hell, that school is only seven miles away," I reasoned.
"Fine. But don't have too much fun without me. And you have to tell me everything that goes on at that school. Especially tomorrow. It is your first day and all," she replied.
I felt guilty. Like really, really guilty. I knew that I had to keep everything about Angel Academy a secret from Ella. I needed to lie in order to attend, and to keep my memories.
"Yeah, yeah. That's only a given," I said, trying to brush off of that subject.
"Okay," she said, pouting.
"Ella, that's not going to make me change my mind. My mind's made up. Now get out so I can start packing," I replied, rolling my eyes at Ella's childish behavior.
"Fine," she replied, storming out the door.
I sighed in exasperation as I continued my slow process of packing. I had just unpacked everything and now I had to repack. It seemed like I would always being moving to different places. I could be the Queen of Moving. I diverted my attention from that thought and looked back at the school pamphlet.
At first glance, the pamphlet advertising Angel Academy seemed normal. However, I found that when I used the word decoder that was provided, the pamphlet's words were extremely different.
The activities listed were beyond extreme. They were mental. For example, what kind of a nut job would voluntarily apply for Advanced Street Fighting? Was there even such thing as an advanced form of street fighting? I shrugged. To me, street fighting was fighting. And fighting equaled injuries. Which equaled scared me. So that was definitelyout.
However, some activities were surprisingly normal. All of the basic subjects a normal high school would teach were listed on the pamphlet. But my moment of relief was soon washed away just as quickly as it came. Of course they would be college courses.
It only took me a few minutes to get everything packed. With all the moves I've made in my life, I know so many ways to pack everything easily and quickly. Besides the essentials, clothes and toiletries, I had to pack twenty, three subject notebooks. Twenty notebooks. Each notebook was to be specified for every subject that I was going to have to take. Exactly how much learning was going to be done there?
I really hoped that I would be ranked as a Newbie. I figured the lower the rank, the less work. Well, unless you were a Prodigy. There would be nothing left for you to do. But I seriously doubted that I was. I had no experience in the wholespying thing.
"Max, you need to get some sleep. It's your big day tomorrow," Mom whispered as she opened the door to my bedroom a crack.
"Yeah, I know. I just finished packing," I replied, dropping the pamphlet onto the mini-drawer at my bedside."
"Okay, sweet dreams," she called back.
"You too."
A/N: Okay I doubt you want me to write about Max tossing and turning while sleeping for hours. So I'm skipping to when Max actually arrives at school.
"Look at her."
"Oh my God. What is she wearing? Is that even legal?"
"She looks nice. Maybe I should talk to her."
"She's kind of cute."
These were only a few of the words that were exchanged when I first walked out of my mother's car with my luggage. It seemed that besides the freshmen, I was the only new recruit.
"Hello! It's nice to see you again. You, know. Wait. Do you know? Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. Hold up do you even remember me? I'm Nudge. The tour guide?" an all too familiar voice said.
I turned around, but I knew I didn't have to turn around to identify the girl who was talking to me. Of course, Nudge. She was the only person that knew me here. Other than The Shadow. Yep. The Shadow. After coming up with a few nicknames possible for the person behind me, I only came up with that. Cheesy as hell, but hey, it was appropriate.
"Hi Nudge," I replied.
"Yay! I'm so glad that you remembered me! I mean sometimes people just don't remember me. Or maybe they're pretending. Or maybe they're just ignoring me. Well, whatever. Their loss! But I'm so happy that you actually decided to attend here. I finally get a friend!" Nudge shouted. "So anyways, let's go to the front office together. You need to go to get your schedule. And to choose your agent name! I mean you can't go around without a name."
"Yeah, sure. Thanks," I said. And I really was thankful. Thanks to Nudge, I would be able to know how things went around Angel Academy without too much trouble. "Can you help me with my bags, though?"
Apparently Nudge just realized that I was struggling to carry all of my luggage. She was probably too caught up in our "conversation" to notice. Not that I held it against her.
"Oh, sorry! I didn't realize that you had luggage! I mean I was just so happy that you were here and everything so I just got caught up. You know what I mean? I hope you do. Here, let me help you with that," Nudge apologized, taking one of my bags out of my grasp. "Now, come on! We got to hurry. We only have one hour before the real orientation."
I visibly gulped as I followed Nudge to the main office. I really didn't want to know what the real orientation was like. I knew what I was getting into when I made my decision, but that didn't mean I wasn't scared of what was going to happen.
I had seen the outside of the main office before, but the inside was completely different from what the outside indicated. While the outside had an ancient Greek feel to it, the inside was completely modernized.
With the color scheme of blue, black, and gray, it seemed futuristic. There were rows of counters full of people in white lab coats typing furiously on Dell PCs. People were bustling about in the large building while others were sitting on black leather sofas while sipping coffee.
Nudge led me through the maze until we finally reached our destination.
Sitting behind a desk made of metal was a petite Asian lady who had all of her hair neatly tied up in a bun. Her finger were delicately typing on a MacBook. On her chest was a name tag that indicated that her name was Mrs. Hans.
"Hi Mrs. Hans! I'm here to help the new sophomore student retrieve her schedule and name," Nudge said, getting the attention of Mrs. Hans.
"Why, of course. Here's your schedule. It's quite easy to remember, we don't use the block schedule so your schedule should be the same everyday unless you're noticed otherwise," she replied in a strong Korean accent. "And as for your agent name, you can tell me right now and I'll add it to our files."
I thought for a moment. Then, it suddenly hit me. If nobody knew my real name then they wouldn't know if my agent name was my real name or not. And I was pretty sure that at least some people thought of this too.
"Thank you," I replied, taking the slip of paper that was to be my schedule from Mrs. Han's slender fingers, "And as for my name, I'd like to be called Maximum Ride."
She glanced at me suspiciously. She obviously knew that my real name was indeed Maximum Ride.
"Okay then. You can head to your dorm while I register it into the system. I suppose you won't need any help locating it with the help of Nudge. She's actually your roommate," she said, sighing as she handed me a card key.
"Thank you so much for your help," I replied as I was dragged out of the building by a prancing Nudge.
I wasn't even able to check my schedule or even the rank I was in due to Nudge's "obsessive talking syndrome."
"Oh my gosh! I'm so glad that we're roomies! Now we can totally talk to each other whenever we want and everything! Well not whenever we want because I really don't want to talk to you while I'm doing my business, but other than that, yay! So anyways, I'm glad I can call you by a name now, Maximum Ride!" she said in absolute delight as we headed towards the dormitories.
"Well actually, I'd prefer to be called Max."
"Okay then, Max! I'm sure that we're going to be great friends. I can just tell! I mean have you ever had one of those feelings where you just know things? Yeah, well I'm totally feeling that right now!"
It took around five minutes to finally get to our dorm. Dorm number seven. I took it to be a good sign, seven being a lucky number and all.
I gasped when I took my first step into the dorm. It had the same theme as the main office. Massage chairs, water beds, mini fridges, walk-in closets, flat screen plasma televisions, everything was there.
"Isn't this so cool? I totally fainted when I first came here as a freshman!" Nudge exclaimed.
"Y-yeah," I managed to stutter, still in complete shock of the sight before me.
Never being one of the wealthy class, this room made it seem like I had just died and gone to heaven.
"Hey, I'm going to take the left bed, you can have the right if its all right with you. I just can't stand the window beds. It gets me all creeped out. Like what if someone just like breaks in. I mean I know that I can just use my tranquilizer gun, but still. Creepy," Nudge shivered.
"Yeah, sure. I don't mind."
And oh I did not mind at all. I was in heaven.
I was suddenly brought out of my haze when my ear picked up some shouting from outside the room.
"Ugh. They're at it again," Nudge said, shaking her head.
"At what again?" I asked.
"The Advanced Group. They're always terrorizing the Newbies on the first day of school. They all think that they're better than everyone, well except the Prodigies, and they just bully everyone below them. They're like all totally sadistic. The things they do are justbrutallycruel. And they find joy in it," she replied.
"What? Well does anyone do anything to stop it?"
"No. You help, and you're the next target. So everyone just grins and bears it," she replied.
That just confirmed my suspicions. Everyone here was too chicken to show their piece of mind.
"I'm going to help."
"No, Max! You won't! You're going to get killed!"
"Listen, I don't care if I get beaten the crap out of, but I just can't stand here and do nothing about it!"
I quickly began to reach for the door when I suddenly let out a gasp of pain. I let out a strangled cry as I collapsed onto the floor.
Nudge began to scream for help while reaching for the phone.
I just wanted to die, die, die. The pain was unbearable and it felt like my brain was exploding inside of my skull. My brain felt like it was getting doused by flames and whenever it cooled down slightly, the fire came back stronger by tenfold.
Suddenly, I was picked up from the ground.
I was able to manage my eyes to open enough to see who it was. A teenage boy around my age dressed in dark clothing was carrying me. Before I succumbed to the darkness, crept into my mind: Fang.